One of the key decisions when planning the build was how we were going to distrubute television, telephone, audio and computer signals around the house.
You've probably heard of Category 5 (Cat-5) cable. This is the standard for computer networks and is geneally used in new houses too to perform all of the above functions. However, with the new HD video standards Cat-5 is finding it hard to keep up - you just can't get enough information down the cable.
A bit of research lead me to a cable standard that I wasn't aware of - Catergory 8 (Cat-8), which can carry over 7 times more data than Cat-5.
Plus, with some clever faceplates and a neat patch panel its much tidier as well, minising the clutter and number of sockets we have to put on the walls.
Check out the supplier website for more details: Single Point Networks
The clever bit comes in how we wire up the Sky boxes. By putting the Sky box in the roof along next to the patch panel for the Cat-8 system, we can distribute the TV signal, in full HD and digital audio glory, to many TVs around the house. Plus, we put infrared receivers on each of the tellies to pick up the signal from a Sky remote and relay it back to the box via the Cat-8 cable, so you can change the channels from any of the rooms too.
Clever eh?
